April 15 (SeeNews) - Macedonia's parliament speaker said on Friday he signed a decision setting June 5 as the date for early general elections, following parliament's dissolution as part of an EU-brokered deal aiming to end a long-standing political crisis.
His decision comes amid several days of massive protests against the president prompted by his decision to halt an investigations against local politicians embroiled in a wiretapping scandal.
The main opposition party, the SDSM, has said it will boycott the elections.
"Based on my constitutional and legal duties and in accordance with the decision for the dissolution of parliament, today I signed the decision to stage early elections for members of parliament on June 5," Trajko Veljanoski said, as quoted in a statement on the parliament's website.
Macedonia's parliament dissolved in February, in line with the so-called Przino agreement, brokered by the European Union, under which the main political parties in Macedonia agreed to hold early elections on April 24 in a bid to resolve a prolonged political crisis. On February 22, the polls were postponed for June 5 under pressure from the EU and the US, which insisted that Macedonia needed more time to meet the international community's requirements for organising credible elections.
At the beginning of the year, SDSM announced it would boycott the early elections arguing that the reforms needed to secure a fair vote, chiefly media reforms and clearing of voters’ registry, had not been implemented.
The political crisis in the country started last January when SDSM leader Zoran Zaev accused the coalition government of the conservative VMRO-DPMNE and the ethnic Albanians' DUI of corruption, wiretapping illegally thousands of people and covering-up a murder. For its part, the government charged Zaev with trying to destabilise the country.
In a surprising announcement on Tuesday, president Gjorge Ivanov said he has decided to suspend the investigations against politicians included in the 2015 wiretapping scandal, setting off violent mass protests with calls that he step down.